What if the writers never came back?
I don't really watch that much television at all. I've not been a regular follower of the Soprano's, Entourage, Lost, 24, Grey's Anatomy, etc... even though they're all probably really good shows, to me, there's just not enough time in the day.
So this writers strike isn't really affecting me at all.
But it got me thinking...
What would happen if both sides dug in, and they just never went back to work?
What if the big media companies said, "Fine, screw it, we'll just put reruns for the next year or two"?
Would people stop watching television? What would they do with their time? Would they go and read books? Would online traffic start to go up? Maybe we'd emerge from our houses and start to discover the outside world in a big way. Has attendance at Meetup's gone up since the strike? Are people in NYC apartments desperately knocking on the doors of neighbors they've lived next door to for years and never talked to before?
"Please... entertain me... I'm desperate! Charades! Jenga! Anything!"
How many seasons of reruns and reality television could they put on before they shake loose every last viewer?
I have to be honest, I was surprised that TV writers get royalties. I thought of it more like a salaried job.
Aren't there tons of creative people dying to be writers anyway? I could never figure out how workforces get away with striking when there's probably 2x their number waiting to get into that job. I'm surprised there aren't more hobby writers that wouldn't cross the picket line. I'd write for one of these shows. How hard could it be to write for Grey's Anatomy, seriously?
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Disconnected
Does the web ever make you feel really disconnected?
I was going through the contact list in my phone before. It was a huge repository of little reminders of all the people I don't really talk to anymore. Social networks get like that, too... they go stale... you keep adding, but there's no pruning.
Someone should create a social network that is just about 100 people. That's it... you can only have 100 friends, and when you add someone, you have to boot someone off.
I love IM, but how many times do you have the following conversation with people?
"What's up?"
"Not much... how are you?"
"Good... and you?"
"Yeah... good."
And then... nothing... AIM is like an ICU, with all these friendships on life support that would otherwise die if not hooked up to the digital feeding tube.
When I die, please donate my screenname to some little kid that needs it more than I do.
What is it about social networking online that makes it so unlike how I interact with real people in the real world?
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Meeting up with some MIT MBAs Tonight
There's a group of 10-15 MIT MBAs coming into the city today to learn about opportunities in the NYC tech world. We're meeting up after work for happy hour at Link Lounge by Union Square if you're interested.
Here's the link on NYCtechevents.com.
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Comment of the Day
Re: Founder's Club
"Oh well, you should create your own club. Oh, that's right. You did. And it's open. Nice." - Nate
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Michael Eisner on User Gen Content
"How many times can you watch a kid get hit in the groin?"Answer: Over and over and over again.
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I can haz one feedz, plz: Why I won't Tumblr
I saw David Karp present Tumblr last night and its posting interface was really slick. It even allows people to suck in RSS feeds of other blogs.
I asked David whether he ever intended on making it go from suck to blow.
In other words, I have ZERO interest in maintaining two places for posting, like Fred and Michael are doing. I find it really annoying that I need to subscribe to two feeds for someone for basically the same stuff. I consider Tumblr a blog, mostly because I read it in a feedreader. Sure, I also consume Fred's last.fm feed and his Flickr feed, but I consume it in the context of those sites, which is what I want. I don't want my whole content experience dulled down to RSS...just blogs.
If the best part about Tumblr is the ease and format of posting, why not separate the two? Let me post a Tumblr style post to my Typepad account. Who cares where it's hosted?
Actually, to be honest, Flock already does some of what Tumblr does. I can right click a picture and autopost it to my blog and the same with a link. Still, Tumblr supports more formats.
And if Oddcast was paying attention, they'd propose a way to allow Tumblr users to quickpost a Voki. Perhaps that could be part of the business model there...paid inclusion. If you want a "post an X" button on Tumblr, you can pay them for it. The group of Tumblr users out there is a very influential and cool group...definitely people you want to market your widgets to.
Guess our Founder's Club invites got lost in the mail... happens all the time.
Live from New York, it's Founders Club--with M.C. Hammer | The Social - CNET News.com
Caroline writes, "So who was there? It was more like "who wasn't there?""
Um... Alex and I weren't. We were too busy hitting the refresh button continuously so we could be one of the exclusive group of 400 people to eek our way into to the Tech Meetup.
I mean, who wants to hangout with Lindsay Campbell and Hammer anyway? Yawn. Besides, the horse drawn pumpkin that we were riding in last night got a flat on 23rd, so we never would have made it over in time.
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links for 2007-11-06
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Who says peer production isn't useful??
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Did they make many Web 2.0 investments to begin with?
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I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!
Perfect!
Nothing like buzz over a Yahoo! social network focused on careers to remind you that, even on the day you close some money for angel financing, you have exactly zero seconds in the life of a startup to sit back and relax.
I will absolutely be writing lots about KickStart, but for now, we're focused on building Path 101, not competitor watching.
I have to be honest, though, I thought it was going to be a little bit more of a competitor. Yahoo! seems bent on getting attention away from Facebook and LinkedIn, rather than trying to work with them, and we're happy to let them play that game. A social network around jobs is the last thing we want to be.
That being said, if anyone wants to be my KickStart friend, I'm here. In case you're on mobile RSS, and can't see the link, just remember, the web address is:
http://kickstart.yahoo.com/profile/?QOiLyFc.jlgCr_MDRvWLjlE-
Got it?
Got an invite to an event about shopping for tech gifts "When You Don't Understand Tech"
"We wanted you to know we are holding an exclusive event for New York area bloggers and editors (if you happen to be in town) at Olives Restaurant at the W Hotel Union Square on Wednesday, November 14th and would love for you to attend. Should be a first-class affair sponsored by Staples (who will have all of their latest holiday tech offerings there).
Tory Johnson, of Good Morning America, will be speaking about "How to Shop for Tech Gifts…When You Don't Understand Tech," as well as giving an informal hands-on demonstration of the hottest, newest tech gifts on the market for this holiday season. "
... Jeez... Is my tech blogging that bad??
"You will learn tech lingo, tips on decoding buzzwords, how these can apply to your life, and be the first to check-out these new gadgets to share with your family, friends, and readers!"
Decoding buzzwords? Yeah... like what's that RSS thing everyone keeps talking about? And Web 2.0? Please enlighten me.
Can I send my parents?
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My Leisurely Nine Hour Drive to Boston
TheDay.com - On I-95, A Deadly Day
Yesterday, I spent the afternoon answering e-mails, managing the sending of documents around back and forth to our lawyer about our financing, and speaking with some folks from a university career office.
I did this all from my car, on my phone, parked, engine off, in the middle of I-95, miles behind an accident that blocked traffic in all directions and stuffed up a good portion of the roads in Connecticut. It was one of the most utterly ridiculous driving experiences of my life. Wherever you went, there were cars, cars, and more cars, and backwoods Connecticut roads that couldn't handle the backup. Eventually, I made my way up Rt. 85 up to I-84 and over to Boston, but stop and go most of the way. I'm finally glad that's over.
Still, I fared better than the folks involved in this terrible accident.
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Updated presentation for Path 101
I've been trying to come up with an over presentation that I could just leave on the Path 101 site and forget about--so people who randomly stumbled in could get a better sense of what we were up to. I tried Google Docs, but I really wasn't happy that I couldn't do some kind of animation and walkthrough. Then again, I really don't like adding my voice to these things, even though people seem to like it. So I created an animated presentation on Powerpoint, and used Jing (along with its 5 min limit), to capture it. It exports a Flash SWF, which is now sitting on screencast. I have a few issues with the result, but I don't think it's that bad.
- It might be a little too fast. I'm not sure, because I've seen the presentation a million times. I prob should have combined the team slides into one and I'm sure there's one other slide I can can.
- I really, really wanted to embed it smaller somewhere on the site. I can't for the life of me figure out how to make the Flash smaller. I can make the embed smaller, that's easy, but to squeeze the actual Flash into a smaller embed... no idea.
Here's what I wound up with... any suggestions? Converting to video would have solved that, but I couldn't find a good conversion tool that converted at a good resolution. UPDATE: I used Slideshare at the suggestion of others and it came out MUCH BETTER!! - If I convert it to video, perhaps I'll give in and add a voice track... but it takes a long time to speak through.. and I want to keep it at 5.
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Tags: path101, presentations, flash, ppt
links for 2007-10-31
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This I'm definitely going to get... great idea.
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hmm.. there might be a good sushi place in Bay Ridge after all
Please add me to the "Make my web ads completely effin' irrelevant list"
There may be some legislation in the works to ban tracking of consumers for behavioral targeting on the web.
Great!
It really bothers me when I'm in Gmail, talking about kayaking, and I get offered kayaking gear in an ad.
Or when I'm looking at a small printer for the office, then I go check a free weather site, and there's an ad for a great deal on exactly the kind of printer I'm looking for.
It's invasive and I'm just not going to stand for it anymore. I don't want anyone to know anything about me. I want my ad experience online to be just like my television experience, completely untargeted and irrelevant.
Bring on the mortgage ads!
If AOL/Tacoda gives me a chance to opt in to sharing more about myself, I'm on it.
I'll give them my del.icio.us tags, my Twitter stream, fill out a survey, whatever they need me to do... as long as it doesn't mean MORE ads... just better ones.
This is different than Do Not Call. Phone calls interrupt my day and they're annoying. Web ads... web ads currently suck and they NEED more data about me... and at least on the web I know that you can engineer privacy controls like Tacoda has so that they don't need to know who I am exactly to target me.
Hey privacy wonks... go work on something useful, like helping people opt out of cellphone contracts without paying $200.
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Facebook: Worth a Trillion Billion Zillion Dollars?
Nope.
But if I link to this post, I'll wind up on Techmeme and you'll all get drawn to this post like lemmings.
Silly lemmings.
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Tags: facebook